That Carmen could not, as an established medical fact, because a doctor had said so.

No doctor ever said so.

Not one.

Every result Carmen had was normal and the only test outstanding was mine.

My mother took an open question, assigned it to her daughter-in-law, and put it into the world as a finding, in roughly a dozen conversations across eighteen months.

And I knew she was doing it.

Not the full extent — I did not know about the hairdresser.

But I knew the shape of it, because Carmen told me, more than once, and because I heard my mother do a version of it myself at least twice.

And every single time, I said some version of the same sentence.

You know how she is.